Slain Copenhagen Guard Recalled as ‘Always Ready To Do Part’
Mourners embrace at memorial service for Dan Uzan, the Jewish guard killed in Copenhagen terror attacks. Image by getty images
Dan Uzan, the Jewish volunteer guard killed in a shooting outside Copenhagen’s central synagogue, was remembered at his funeral as one “who was always ready to do his part.”
“Everybody in our community knew Dan,” said Dan Rosenberg, head of the Danish Jewish community, on Wednesday at the Mosaiske Vestre Jewish cemetery in Copenhagen. “He was always ready to do his part; he was a very fine example for the whole community.”
Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt was among the hundreds of mourners who attended the funeral, which was held under tight security, the French news agency AFP reported.
“The Jewish world embraces you at this difficult time,” Natan Sharansky, the Jewish Agency’s chairman, told Uzan’s family at the funeral. Uzan, who had an Israeli father and a Danish mother, died early Sunday morning from injuries sustained in the attack on the Danish capital’s central synagogue in Krystalgade. He was 37.
Uzan was standing guard outside the synagogue at an event held at an adjacent building for approximately 80 people who had gathered for a bat mitzvah. The attack occurred hours after a fatal shooting Saturday afternoon at a free speech event at a cultural center featuring the Danish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who is under police protection because of his cartoons caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad.
Danish police in a shootout Sunday killed the suspected gunman in both attacks.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
